The largest generation in the workforce, millennials, are behind the eight ball financially, said the chair of the Joint Economic Committee, Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats, at a committee hearing on Wednesday.

Millennials, who span the ages of the late teens to the early 30s, are receiving lower starting wages than previous generations, Coats said. The number of people under 30 owning a business has fallen to a 30-year low, and about 44 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed.

He added that millennials have no fair shot at receiving fair value for the taxes they are paying into Social Security and Medicare benefits for baby boomers.

“Young people are being robbed by older generations,” said the senator.

The Joint Economic Committee is one of the few congressional committees with members from both the House and the Senate.

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, pointed out that millennials, numbering 88 million, face bigger challenges than the boomers did. Most will need a college degree to get the economic security that boomer high school graduates did, and it will take them longer to reach that level of financial stability.

“The recession will have a lasting impact on millennials,” she said.

Jennifer Mishory, executive director of the Young Invincibles, an advocacy group for millennials, said at the hearing that the present and future of her generation is worsened by the reality that parents in this group are experiencing the highest poverty rates of any young parents in the last 25 years.

One in five millennial parents is living in poverty, she said.

Despite the economic barriers in place at the start of their careers, Mishory said 70 percent are optimistic about their financial prospects and 79 percent believe they will be better off than their parents.